Talk:Native American Church

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 26 August 2019 and 10 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Mmascarich.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 04:58, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Good Samaritan removal of Utah NAC website link
The administrator of the Utah NAC website in October of last year claimed that a link from Wikipedia was creating a denial of service attack against his site. He claimed "I only have limited bandwidth on this server for web access, and I cannot have it overloaded like it has been." He eventually went so far as to change the root page of the site to be a diatribe against "web spamming" and threatened to send a bill to Wikipedia for bandwidth usage. He made it very clear that he did not want any links to his site from Wikipedia. I think those wishes should be respected. — MediaMangler 14:44, 29 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Archived discussion from October can be found here. — MediaMangler 15:39, 29 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Hi, this is very considerate on your part. There is a copy of the materials in the archive.org site which clearly should not offend anyone, so I am relinking the content to this article since the listing is of legitimate NAC's.  I am removing the the Temple of Inner Light since it is not a legal Native American Church listed with the Texas Department of Public Safety and the DEA as a lawful NAC. Thanks for the attention here.  PeyoteMan 02:32, 30 March 2006 (UTC)


 * We harmed a website simply by linking to it? Hyacinth 20:59, 10 May 2006 (UTC)


 * "...since it is not a legal Native American Church listed with the Texas Department of Public Safety and the DEA as a lawful NAC" doesn't seem a valid way to determine whether a church is a legal or legitemate Native American Church. That may affect government toleration or lack of toleration of some extremely important religious practices but legitemacy would be an non-governmental matter wouldn't it? I understand incorporation is more important from a legal and practical standpoint for an NAC church than a Lutheran church or an Eastern Orthodox church but I don't understand how the First Amendment can allow these government police agencies to determine legitemacy as Native American Church, Lutheran church or Eastern Orthodox church. I'm sure the government has some criteria for judging whether churches qualify for tax breaks and such but I don't think it has anything to do with judging doctrinal soundness within a particular faith. Since government agencies do make decisions somehow about whether a church, association or individual is covered by the federal peyote Native American Church "special exempt persons" regulation or state laws... Well, I truly don't understand the legal basis of that but I don't think it's appropriate for us as Wikipedia editors to use that as a basis for stating a self-defined NAC church is "illegitemate." I don't know if the Temple of Inner Light is self-defined as such and am raising general questions and thoughts for serious responses. Moss&amp;Fern (talk) 03:06, 18 January 2010 (UTC)


 * As a matter of fact the government has made all kinds of laws restricting Indians from practicing their traditional religions (see Potlatch). It was not until the 1970's that we finally gained something approximating religious freedom, but even that comes with many regulations and restrictions.  However in this instance that you are asking about, it's because Peyote possession and use is illegal to everyone in the USA except by special permit. So if the church is in the USA and not licensed by the DEA then it can't legally function as an NAC and anyone participating is subject to arrest.  But one way that the "list" criteria can be tripped up is if the legal name that was registered is different from the name that the church is commonly known as, in other words it's a DBA (doing business as).  So perhaps it's good to not be too quick to remove something, but to take a closer look and see if there is an explanation for why it was not found on the list, it may be there under a different name or it may be so new that it has not yet been published on the list.  I doubt very much that a publicly visible organization would risk having it's members arrested.  Manyshoes (talk) 23:55, 19 February 2010 (UTC)


 * By the way, the information has been updated based on information from a web search and from information at http://religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/nrms/nachurch.htm, probably more details could be incorporated if somoene wanted to take the time... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.22.8.120 (talk • contribs).

Peyote polemics
Having the persuasive opinion in the article in the boldface detracted from the overall credibility of the article, I thought, so I removed the boldface and left parts in regular font, and I did remove the argument about whether or not the laws affecting peyote distribution are constitutional. Maybe that could be a separate section presenting the various arguments pro and con? But it was really very awkward where it was. Amity150 23:35, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Inipi Statement
I question the the following statement as is relates to the Native American Church topic: "Many Tribes practice inipi ceremonies, a.k.a. Sweat lodge, which involve prayer, singing, and the taking of the peyote sacrament. These ceremonies are of shorter duration than a NAC tipi peyote ceremony, and are performed during the day, and at night."

As I have come to understand, the inipi ceremony arose from a completely different source - not that of the peyote religion. Also, stated on the inipi page is the following: "An Inipi ceremony, also known as a sweat lodge, is a Lakota purification ceremony." This is consistent with my understanding.

I recommend removing the above statement from the Native American Church site. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rainwood (talk • contribs) 23:37, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Point of view, questionable remarks.
After reading through the article, a few lines lept out in my mind as out of place. One place is in the following exerpt: "There are only 3 licensed Peyoteros left in Texas, due to overhavesting, and illegal poaching, and strict licensing and tax regulations by the Texas Department of Public Safety and the U.S. Federal government. They are attempting to make Peyote inaccessible to the people. When the people listen to what the Peyote Medicine has to say, and follow their true higher spirit selves, government has no authority. Only Creator has authority. That is the truth, regardless of the pervasive fear and terror used to scare people into submission." The first sentence kept in the context of the paragraph, but after that it goes into what seems like a very personal point of view. I didn't want to remove these lines right away without checking if I was right to assume they don't really belong. The following line also strikes me as odd, having almost nothing to do with the surrounding text: "This is a religious issue, not a racial issue." Irontobias (talk) 01:55, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

This article devotes too much attention to Peyotism, and neglects many other aspects of the NAC that readers will want to know. The article needs (1) information on the format, duration, and structure of NAC ceremonies (2) differences between the "half moon" and "big moon" traditions (3) whether the two traditions mix freely or are kept separate (4) the historical context of the development of the NAC-- e.g., Indian wars, cultural dislocation, alcoholism. (5) Parker and Wilson had different tribal affiliations (Comanche; Caddo). How much of a difference did this make? How soon did their ceremonies transcend tribal differences? What was the language of the original ceremonies (Comanche? Caddo? or what?), and to what extent did those differences keep the traditions apart in the first decades?

I like the information in A Brief History of the Native American Church, by Jay Fikes but am not in a position to judge the reliability of his essay. I find it curious that his essay is not cited. BobSchacht (talk) 21:51, 28 October 2009 (UTC)BobSchacht

—Preceding unsigned comment added by BobSchacht (talk • contribs) 21:34, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

The Fabled White Peyote section. Deletion as irrelevant to NAC?
I don't see the relevance of this section to the Native American Church and am considering deleting it. I request opinions about this matter.

Frankly, a lot of the material in this article doesn't seem particularly relevant to an article on the NAC. Perhaps a broader scope article should be created where some of the material would be more appropriate and could be linked to from this NAC article. Moss&amp;Fern (talk) 13:43, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Questions left unanswered
I came here from the peyote article, which talked about legal exemptions for the NAC, and stated that it was claimed the law was "racially neutral". I get here, and all I can find is that distributing peyote is limited to those of native descent. What I was curious about was whether membership of the religion, and participation in the peyote ceremonies, is limited (whether by law or by the NAC) to those of native descent or not. Maybe this information would be outside the scope of this article, but if not, it'd probably be interesting information to have in the article. Xmoogle (talk) 12:44, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Another unanswered Question
On Quannah Parker's page, it indicates that he is a founder of the Native American Church. That needs to be mentioned here as well as what his role in founding it was. Taram (talk) 20:16, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

External links modified (February 2018)
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20140620051155/http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/jms089/Z-Unpublished%20Work/Shields-Christ%20%26%20Cactus.pdf to http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/jms089/Z-Unpublished%20Work/Shields-Christ%20%26%20Cactus.pdf
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20150402103722/http://www.wrs.vcu.edu/profiles/NativeAmericanChurch.htm to http://www.wrs.vcu.edu/profiles/NativeAmericanChurch.htm
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20071214012458/http://religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/nrms/nachurch.htm to http://religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/nrms/nachurch.htm
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Specific Doctrines and Beliefs
Are there any specific doctrines and beliefs that tend to separate this in any notable way from other similar religions? If so, can we have someone add a section there, as I can't seem to find anything specific to belief structure, doctrine, etc. 66.90.153.184 (talk) 23:08, 9 September 2019 (UTC)


 * There are. I found a book titled "Menomini peyotism : a study of individual variation in primary group with a homogeneous culture" extensively on the Menominee people's sect of peyotism. It includes a chapter on doctrinal beliefs. — I&#39;ma editor2022 (🗣️💬 &#124;📖📚) 23:55, 11 November 2023 (UTC)